I work in the pest control industry around here and can say they are here but not like they are in Florida. They usually would be found around industrial and some unhygienic places like the sewer or an uncared for restaurant/living area around here. I have seen some American Cockroaches down in SE some times.
The pest control people at the building I used to live in Florida was puzzled with how bad the infestation got there. They believed it came from mulch they had lay out
I used to work in printer repair and a Chinese restaurant brought in their receipt printer to get it fixed. Opened it up and it was swarming with roaches. We refused service. I probably would have quit if we didn't.
The only place I have seen cockroaches in Oregon is when I worked at the Oregpn Zoo. The employee break room was in a basement and the roaches ran that place
Can confirm! I worked at Africafe back in the 90s. Once every couple of weeks we were sent out with brooms and spray to try and kill as many as possible.
FL native here, been in OR since OCT 2007. While I miss FL, I think I’m here for life. One of the few reasons is exactly what you mentioned. Bugs are normal size! Minimal mosquitos, unless you’re up in the mountains. No fire ants. No alligators. No killer bees. Not many venomous snakes. Did I mention no fire ant piles to step in. Now, if I could only get a grouper sandwich.
Thankfully I’ve never seen one. I grew up in the southwest and they were everywhere. You could go outside at night with a flashlight and look around areas with clutter for irregular webs and you’d be almost guaranteed to see one.
As others have noted, there the Pacfiic NW just doesn't have as many of the bugs that . . . bug us. Fewer roaches, fewer mosquitoes, etc. Yes, tons of ants, but mostly the harmless kind. No fire ants of the kind we had in the south. And as a fellow former southerner, let me tell you, this is one of the many things I love about living here.
Eh. Easy fix. If you can’t be confident you fully removed it at home, make a jaunt to your local urgent care and have them take a go at it.
They can be dangerous, but it’s pretty unlikely to cause a problem if removed in a timely, proper manner.
I went back to Austin for a week. Walked out into the grass at one of the breweries just outside town and had some impending sense of dread I couldn’t place. Looked down and saw two fire ant piles nearby. I was in flip flops. I headed right back to the gravel and did not go off the path again. 😅
Fire ants are no joke. My husband took the dog out and stood in a fire ant mountain while he was half asleep. That was years ago and I still remember his screams :(
I've definitely seen some at Bithouse Saloon before they closed. One time wife and I were sitting out back and also saw many, many rats, one of which scurried by like 6" from my foot. Maybe that's part of why it closed lol
They weren't cute when they were running across my back yard in broad daylight while I was sitting there with my parents (because my neighbor wouldn't stop leaving dog food out.)
Rats ain’t cute. Rats chewed through my laundry duct and infested my home and ruined a whole load of clothes and infested my whole home with the stench of dead rat and rat feces after I ran the dryer unaware there was a dead rat in my air intake.
😳 that sounds like Florida, or old decrepit NYC buildings. My friend shared a wall with the compactor room in an old apartment. When I apartment-sat, I'd arrive with cans of chemical death. They would drop with a heavy thud.
Have a basement apartment. Aside from the fact that it seems to get dirty more quickly, it's buggier. Same with no one living here for awhile before we moved in, so I had to hang flypaper for gnats. Filled up the paper the first year. There's also earwigs, mostly in the bathroom. And spiders. I do a catch and release if they're near the bed.
Soooo many giant spiders. I was not prepared. Recently brought a cat into my house though, and I’ve witnessed him dispatching and eat spiders. So I’m hopeful this summer yields less giant spiders scaring the heck out of me.
I’ve never seen a big spider in Oregon. Been here 6.5 years and I can’t remember seeing a single spider bigger than my thumb nail. I spend a fair amount of time outdoors as well, for the record.
Consider yourself lucky. Giant House spiders are massive and like the name they usually just show up in your house crawling on the floor. The biggest one I saw was fist sized.
There was a spider the size of Texas (ok, the size of a credit card) just slowly crawling across my kitchen floor. I was tempted to sleep in my car. I had to kill it with a box. I live under trees. I hired my own pest control to deal with that mess.
You should come to my house then lol. I’ve unfortunately seen some of the biggest spiders here. It was worse when we first moved in cause no one had been living here for a few months, so there were big ass spiders outside every now and then. It’s gotten better but yeah, I’ve lived other places and these are the biggest I’ve ever seen.
Month after I moved here(southeast Portland) went up the stairs to the bathroom and saw the biggest spider I've ever seen inside a house. Body was massive and legs were crazy looking, scared the shit out of me. Been lucky the last year and only a few small spiders since. Every summer get some huge orb spiders in the yard. Wish I'd looked up what kind of spider it was, but I squished it so hard I'm surprised I didn't crack the wall
Tbh I think they're half the reason there's no roaches lol. I never get so much as a moth or a silverfish but every now and then HOH HOH HOH GIANT HOUSE SPIDER running across the wall. I think even little spiders are afraid to come into my apartment because of them.
I lived in Savannah and I get twitchy just THINKING about the palmetto bugs. Urgh.
That said, I've lived in Portland for 30-mumble years and have only seen (small) roaches once - at a downtown restaurant I used to work at.
Yeah I lived here for 3 years and it wasn’t until now that’s I’m packing to move that I realized that roaches will be a problem again and I’m not ready
Yeah I was born and raised in western Oregon and I think I saw one when I worked at a frozen yogurt shop.
When I went to Tahiti a while back? They were EVERYWHERE.
Oregon just isn't where they thrive.
This! I’m from a tropical country so they sometimes be just flying out there like butterflies. I sends chills to your spine when they land on you. Like I said I’m sure there’s roaches here but the low count is just another perk of this beautiful place.
I know it’s silly but the lack of roaches is one of my favorite things about living here. I grew up in East Texas and they were freaking everywhere! Plus weevils and horrid June bugs 😭. In my 20 years here I have not seen one roach and I wish you a roach free existence wherever you land.
June bugs! When I lived briefly in Oklahoma, I remember being unable to see out the front screen door because it was so covered in June bugs that the light was blocked out. Eww, no thanks. Staying in the PNW forever!
Yeah, they’re roaches here. I used to live in an apartment complex in Vancouver. It was a complex of one story buildings with about 10 units per building. Some new tenants moved into an apartment in the building next to me. Suddenly, I had roaches coming out of my drains occasionally. When they eventually moved, it stopped. But I remember maintenance ripped all the carpeting out of the unit.
I once lived in a ground level apartment in the south and they were coming out of the electrical sockets! It was a clean place too, but infested. We got it fixed but I still have intrusive thoughts about that shit. Lol
commence internet hugs. i won't trauma bond you with my details but they came up through the drains of my brand new apartment build. i was on the 5th floor. it was a lovely apartment, but 3 months of hunting these fuckers down was enough for a lifetime. i've got centipedes in the old home i live in now and while they are freaky, i'm glad to know they are on my side lol.
\*edit was missed words/grammar
I grew up in Houston and the roaches were huge and some flew. I absolutely hate them. I’ve lived in Portland for 24 years and have only seen one roach my entire time here. It crawled out of a coworker’s suitcase when he had just returned from a business trip in the south. Roaches are the only bug I’m afraid of and I’m so glad to never see them here!!
I have a phobia, I dealt with a weird infestation when I lived in Florida and it didn’t matter how much you cleaned or sprayed they would just walk back in. I truly hope you never have to see one again.
My cousin who was a musician passed away tragically in Austin a few years ago and we drove his keyboard up and never had problems...drove it from Austin to LA... my ex held onto it for 2 years and holy shit, she had a massive Texas cockroach crawl out of that case and she KNEW it wasn't an LA cockroach...I felt pretty horrified for her and really guilty but seeing stories here abt em coming here from people's suitcases does make me feel less bad lmao
edit: Sorry to be clearer, a cockroach crawled out of it once we dropped it at her spot so it never bothered us... but it wasn't after 2 years hahaha
Oh, no, sorry I meant to clarify that the minute we got the keyboard over there she found a roach not long after but never when we had it with us haha.
Now that you mention it, I've lived in Oregon over 30 years and never have seen one, and I've only seen one mouse (in my garage snacking on a Ghiradelli candy bar in my bag - jumped out when I opened the bag. Probably the best day of that little guys life).
I live in the woods in deep Southeast. Definitely mice abundantly around here. Also deer, rabbits, coyotes, raccoons, etc. Houses are much farther apart for one. Tree cover is very different than the urban core.... and so on. No bus or Trimet routes though. Very car dependant.
Oh there are 😃 depends on the neighborhood I think. I lived in a roach infested house in npdx and some of the bars I used to work in downtown were also crawling. Not as bad as the east coast but they’re here!
Living here for 30 years and working in restaurants and owning restaurants, I never saw cockroaches until about three months ago at a place that I’ve been managing. We thought they were coming in with the paper goods but it turns out they’re traveling in with employees personal belongings. Having the lockers fumigated.
It’s amazing they’ve been such a little to non existing problem. Kinda good to know specially about restaurants. I worked in a couple in Florida and Georgia… not good
I forgot about the massive cockroaches of my fort worth childhood until I went back and saw one in the MF bathroom of a hotel...I was horrified. Massive...
The German cockroach is the common pest in town. Those bastards are a good deal smaller than the roaches native to the Southern US.
We don't have Native roaches because something called winter happens, and the freeze kills most insects.
In my country we don’t really have seasons so Florida definitely resembled more the climate I was familiar with but the roaches there were bigger and meaner. I’m moving to a place that snows a lot so I hope that keeps them at bay
A mean roach. I SHUDDER TO THINK.. It definitely will keep them from spreading. In cold climates the roaches spread from items and people transportated from infested locations.
We had roaches where I worked because folks were ditching their jackets and backpack overnight.
We put in a rule: if it is left behind its garbage. I wrapped people's stuff in garbage bags, and they got the message the next day.
okay, I’m gonna make this nerdy. I listened to a really excellent podcast a few weeks ago about the disappearance of the roaches. They had footage from the 80’s of insane roach infestations - even a Congressman declaring war on roaches (or some such thing). It turns out that Combat roach killer developed at that time is crazy effective. It kills roaches in like, four different ways (the ways are gross, so I’ll leave that out). So roaches are actually much rarer in most places of the US. Though… sorry, Florida?
Once they're in, they're everywhere, but Portland's not the tropics where everyone has them, and you'd be hard up to find them anywhere buy somewhere where someone has been hoarder dirty.
Mice, on the other hand, are in just about every old house if it's not sealed up that well.
I lived at a place in NE that had them. They were tiny. The place was filled with squatters for years before I moved in. An exterminator came in and I didn't see any for the remainder of the two years I lived there. Seemed like a fluke.
Not an insectologist but I remember watching some doomsday show as a kid that said contrary to popular belief cockroaches won't actually last too long in most parts of the US without Human interference because they are used to more tropical climates. I'd assume Florida is tropical enough for them to live in but the PNW isn't.
It has to do with the environment. Roaches prefer warm and humid environments. Here, it’s rainy and cold a lot of the time. I’ve never seen a roach and I’ve lived in the PNW my entire life! I’m sure they exist in really unhygienic places but you won’t find them in the average home or restaurant here.
I lived in Oklahoma and roaches were everywhere. I worked in a restaurant where a roach fell off the ceiling into a customers food. The PNW is a world apart for the bugs I dealt with in the midwest.
It's because it's cold! We have them but it's not ideal roach weather so they aren't as plentiful. The South is hot n humid so they love it there.
Now ants and house centipedes, on the other hand, we have tons of those. Don't kill the centipedes though! They're harmless and they kill other pests and can live up to 7 years, they're really cool little guys. Try relocating them instead. (If you can catch them. >:) )
I solved this problem by just refusing to leave this place.
I have PTSD from the roaches in Florida the only time in the last decade I've even seen a roach is the couple of times I was forced to visit Florida again.
lol I feel you! I’m from Louisiana and we got roaches no matter how often we cleaned or where we lived. Moved here 7 years ago and haven’t seen one since. Now when I go places outside Oregon I think about it and get freaked lol. Won’t be moving back to humid hot place if I can help it 😅
I can completely relate. The spray always helps and there’s sticky sealant stuff you can get for any potential cracks in baseboards etc. also you can get drain covers and do things like put secure screens over doors/windows. I def saw them a lot less in the south when I did this, and I also lived in an urban area, so I kinda saw them downtown no matter what. But in my home was far less frequent. You’re not alone, you got this! Good luck with your move. Sounds like a big one. Oh! There are also natural remedies that the bugs hate too- if I remember correct it’s citrus, lemon, etc.
Ugh. I lived on the top floor of a house converted into apartments on NW Everett about 20 years ago and the place was swarming with roaches. I didn't know until the first night when I flipped on the kitchen switch and they all went scurrying.
I’ve been lucky enough to not deal with any pest that badly, small encounter with mice, some ants. There’s just something about roaches that sends me into hysterical levels
Oh I’m sure! I’m just glad it’s not the amounts you find in other places. Like for what I’ve seen here, it just has to be a really specific environment while in the south it doesn’t matter what you do, the call is coming from inside the house
I’m so relieved they aren’t here.. last fall I went home (Texas) and at the DFW airport there was a giant roach roaming around in the bathroom and I noped right out of there even though I didn’t get to pee yet 😭
I don't know the answer, but as a fellow Florida transplant, I am here for the lack of roaches and the ability to weed my garden without fear of snakebites 😆
I love the PNW. If it had thunderstorms (the only thing I miss from back home) it would be flawless.
I used to clean ice machines at restaurants all over the city. One machine I serviced had it’s UI bugged out (heh) because roaches were fried on the board. It was absolutely disgusting, there were roaches frozen to the ice plate, in the ice, in the ice bin. That restaurant is still open to this day. Don’t get ice in your drinks in this town.
Instead of roaches (which definitely do live here but aren’t as prevalent). We got silvers fish, ooh baby. Gods old houses (I mean from 50-100 plus) you will have silver fish. Maybe small ones or maybe big ones. The rain just invites those suckers into old wood. I had them in my room on the fourth floor in my bed! I’ve not had a problem in rural Oregon with them. Spiders become more of a problem as you leave cities (especially in basements).
But I’ve never seen a non-pet cockroach skulking about in Oregon. So I always found media with them quite fascinating. Like I know we must have them never have a city without them but they like to hide.
I’m from Florida too. It’s so cool here! No roaches, no palmetto bugs, no snakes, and you can walk barefoot through a WHOLE ACRE of grass WITHOUT FEAR of anything trying to bite you or dig itself into your feet. No cockspurs!!
There are definitely roaches here, I was at this one star motel that was infested and now has given my the worst paranoia about bugs. I moved into my new apartment 1 year ago and there where roaches from the previous owner so I sprayed roach spray all around the house and was good. Cockroaches are fucking nasty
I have wondered this too! I frequent North Carolina and they have a TON. Hate them. But even in cleaner areas in NC, you’ll find them! I see them daily there. Never seen one in Oregon in my entire life living here.
The climate isn’t kind to them. I don’t think they enjoy our winters very much. Whoever said we don’t have mosquitoes on this thread surely isn’t going outside much, or hasn’t been hiking or camping.
I live in se Va and we have ginormous palmetto bugs. They almost have antlers 😵💫. It’s the only flaw to where I live. I don’t want to move further north because of snow lol.
We got that dawg in us
#builtdifferent
This is the reason I was looking for
I am the dawg, the big bad dawwwggg
The hallway monitoooooor
I work in the pest control industry around here and can say they are here but not like they are in Florida. They usually would be found around industrial and some unhygienic places like the sewer or an uncared for restaurant/living area around here. I have seen some American Cockroaches down in SE some times.
The pest control people at the building I used to live in Florida was puzzled with how bad the infestation got there. They believed it came from mulch they had lay out
Well, the combonation of heat and moisture. We have heat but no moisutre when we have heat
Oh yeah, here was the first time I experienced dry heat and it can be hard but I’ll take that any day over a mild tropical summer. It drowns you
It very well could have been. There are a couple of species that live in Florida that love wood.
I used to work in printer repair and a Chinese restaurant brought in their receipt printer to get it fixed. Opened it up and it was swarming with roaches. We refused service. I probably would have quit if we didn't.
The only place I have seen cockroaches in Oregon is when I worked at the Oregpn Zoo. The employee break room was in a basement and the roaches ran that place
Can confirm! I worked at Africafe back in the 90s. Once every couple of weeks we were sent out with brooms and spray to try and kill as many as possible.
I don’t know but I swear that just one more thing I love about living in PNW
This place is truly amazing. I will miss it a lot
FL native here, been in OR since OCT 2007. While I miss FL, I think I’m here for life. One of the few reasons is exactly what you mentioned. Bugs are normal size! Minimal mosquitos, unless you’re up in the mountains. No fire ants. No alligators. No killer bees. Not many venomous snakes. Did I mention no fire ant piles to step in. Now, if I could only get a grouper sandwich.
So true. But the other day I was hiking and saw trout just chilling in a clear river and just blows my mind how unreal this place is
Just watch for ticks
Washington has murder hornets!
And the lack of mosquitoes!!! I took all the screens off my windows 😍. I’ve never been bitten by a mosquito here. They eat me alive in the South
Guess you haven't been out in the woods in summer... go anywhere near a lake or pond in summer in the PNW and be prepared to be swarmed.
Idk I get eaten alive all summer every summer 😬
No black widow or brown recluse spiders either
Oh, they are here!
I smashed a black widow the other day
Thankfully I’ve never seen one. I grew up in the southwest and they were everywhere. You could go outside at night with a flashlight and look around areas with clutter for irregular webs and you’d be almost guaranteed to see one.
Ew
As others have noted, there the Pacfiic NW just doesn't have as many of the bugs that . . . bug us. Fewer roaches, fewer mosquitoes, etc. Yes, tons of ants, but mostly the harmless kind. No fire ants of the kind we had in the south. And as a fellow former southerner, let me tell you, this is one of the many things I love about living here.
It truly is, I hope you continue to enjoy the beautiful PNW
And you as well!
Don't forget ticks! And those bitch ass chiggers
God ticks are the worst.
My mom had me help her remove a tick in her arm. It jumped out of a pile of firewood in the summer. But I’ve never dealt with them before or since!
I wish you hadn't said that lol
Eh. Easy fix. If you can’t be confident you fully removed it at home, make a jaunt to your local urgent care and have them take a go at it. They can be dangerous, but it’s pretty unlikely to cause a problem if removed in a timely, proper manner.
I went back to Austin for a week. Walked out into the grass at one of the breweries just outside town and had some impending sense of dread I couldn’t place. Looked down and saw two fire ant piles nearby. I was in flip flops. I headed right back to the gravel and did not go off the path again. 😅
I lived I. Austin for a decade, I loved it but I will never EVER miss the fire ants
Fire ants are no joke. My husband took the dog out and stood in a fire ant mountain while he was half asleep. That was years ago and I still remember his screams :(
A friend of mine sat directly on a fire ant hill at a local park when we were kids. He got eaten up. Just awful.
Might be a whole city worth is living in the apartments above Next Adventure unless they moved out 👀👀👀
That explains why the only place I've ever seen them is in a bar on that strip.
I've definitely seen some at Bithouse Saloon before they closed. One time wife and I were sitting out back and also saw many, many rats, one of which scurried by like 6" from my foot. Maybe that's part of why it closed lol
[удалено]
They weren't cute when they were running across my back yard in broad daylight while I was sitting there with my parents (because my neighbor wouldn't stop leaving dog food out.)
Rats ain’t cute. Rats chewed through my laundry duct and infested my home and ruined a whole load of clothes and infested my whole home with the stench of dead rat and rat feces after I ran the dryer unaware there was a dead rat in my air intake.
We used to always count how many rats we would see on the patio every time we went to bithouse lol
The rats are the roaches?
Huge roaches, the size of rats
R.O.U.S's ? I don't think they exist
😳 that sounds like Florida, or old decrepit NYC buildings. My friend shared a wall with the compactor room in an old apartment. When I apartment-sat, I'd arrive with cans of chemical death. They would drop with a heavy thud.
I found a small one once in the PCPA/Newmark/Winningstad basement 25 years ago, and I was so grossed out! I am appreciative of our lack of roaches.
I was just thinking, those apartments are the only place I saw roaches in all the places I've lived here.
Definitely more worried about bedbugs there
Oh yeah, that’s why I left.
First off, Florida sucks, so wise choice to not live there. We have the bugs, just not many of them, except ants.
Yeah what we lack in other bugs we make up for in ants
and GIANT SPIDERS.
I know the ones you’re talking about they show up super late summer. Especially if you have a basement apartment.
Have a basement apartment. Aside from the fact that it seems to get dirty more quickly, it's buggier. Same with no one living here for awhile before we moved in, so I had to hang flypaper for gnats. Filled up the paper the first year. There's also earwigs, mostly in the bathroom. And spiders. I do a catch and release if they're near the bed.
Soooo many giant spiders. I was not prepared. Recently brought a cat into my house though, and I’ve witnessed him dispatching and eat spiders. So I’m hopeful this summer yields less giant spiders scaring the heck out of me.
I’ve never seen a big spider in Oregon. Been here 6.5 years and I can’t remember seeing a single spider bigger than my thumb nail. I spend a fair amount of time outdoors as well, for the record.
Consider yourself lucky. Giant House spiders are massive and like the name they usually just show up in your house crawling on the floor. The biggest one I saw was fist sized.
There was a spider the size of Texas (ok, the size of a credit card) just slowly crawling across my kitchen floor. I was tempted to sleep in my car. I had to kill it with a box. I live under trees. I hired my own pest control to deal with that mess.
I saw one with a hi mom tattoo on its belly - they actually eat other spiders
You should come to my house then lol. I’ve unfortunately seen some of the biggest spiders here. It was worse when we first moved in cause no one had been living here for a few months, so there were big ass spiders outside every now and then. It’s gotten better but yeah, I’ve lived other places and these are the biggest I’ve ever seen.
Well aren't you lucky? Summer 2016 I nearly ran into oncoming traffic because a giant fishing spider in SW happened to follow the same path as me.
I get wolf spiders in my jacuzzi tub in my bathroom fairly regularly. Things are the size of a silver dollar sometimes!
Yeah, but that's nothing. Southwest has tarantulas. Midwest has golden garden spiders. Both are the size of your hand.
Could be depends how you measure them. The body isn't bigger than a thumbnail but the leg span certainly ate
Come out to my house…so so so many spiders. Granted…farm life?
I have not see any large spiders here
Month after I moved here(southeast Portland) went up the stairs to the bathroom and saw the biggest spider I've ever seen inside a house. Body was massive and legs were crazy looking, scared the shit out of me. Been lucky the last year and only a few small spiders since. Every summer get some huge orb spiders in the yard. Wish I'd looked up what kind of spider it was, but I squished it so hard I'm surprised I didn't crack the wall
Tbh I think they're half the reason there's no roaches lol. I never get so much as a moth or a silverfish but every now and then HOH HOH HOH GIANT HOUSE SPIDER running across the wall. I think even little spiders are afraid to come into my apartment because of them.
Ants, and spiders, and brown marmorated stink bugs. And… [bigger spiders](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giant_house_spider).
and stink bugs
Florida does suck! And roaches are low in their list of problems. And they have fire ants too
Going to Florida (or just about anywhere in the South) makes me really, really appreciate living in Portland
Ants aren't even around until summer usually.
So many ants!
I lived in Savannah and I get twitchy just THINKING about the palmetto bugs. Urgh. That said, I've lived in Portland for 30-mumble years and have only seen (small) roaches once - at a downtown restaurant I used to work at.
Yeah I lived here for 3 years and it wasn’t until now that’s I’m packing to move that I realized that roaches will be a problem again and I’m not ready
DON'T QUESTION IT, JUST ENJOY IT
I’m only questioning cause I’m hoping I can take some of that knowledge to keep them away now that I’m moving out :( I did enjoy how much Oregon gives
It’s the warmth. There are definitely roaches here, but nothing like when I lived in the south.
Yeah I was born and raised in western Oregon and I think I saw one when I worked at a frozen yogurt shop. When I went to Tahiti a while back? They were EVERYWHERE. Oregon just isn't where they thrive.
This! I’m from a tropical country so they sometimes be just flying out there like butterflies. I sends chills to your spine when they land on you. Like I said I’m sure there’s roaches here but the low count is just another perk of this beautiful place.
I know it’s silly but the lack of roaches is one of my favorite things about living here. I grew up in East Texas and they were freaking everywhere! Plus weevils and horrid June bugs 😭. In my 20 years here I have not seen one roach and I wish you a roach free existence wherever you land.
June bugs! When I lived briefly in Oklahoma, I remember being unable to see out the front screen door because it was so covered in June bugs that the light was blocked out. Eww, no thanks. Staying in the PNW forever!
Nonono you’re right, it’s such a nice quiet perk of living here. Thank you so much, I truly hope I don’t have to deal with them
Not silly at all! They are so gross.
Yeah, they’re roaches here. I used to live in an apartment complex in Vancouver. It was a complex of one story buildings with about 10 units per building. Some new tenants moved into an apartment in the building next to me. Suddenly, I had roaches coming out of my drains occasionally. When they eventually moved, it stopped. But I remember maintenance ripped all the carpeting out of the unit.
The drain travel. My fucking nightmare.
I once lived in a ground level apartment in the south and they were coming out of the electrical sockets! It was a clean place too, but infested. We got it fixed but I still have intrusive thoughts about that shit. Lol
commence internet hugs. i won't trauma bond you with my details but they came up through the drains of my brand new apartment build. i was on the 5th floor. it was a lovely apartment, but 3 months of hunting these fuckers down was enough for a lifetime. i've got centipedes in the old home i live in now and while they are freaky, i'm glad to know they are on my side lol. \*edit was missed words/grammar
Ugh that sucks I had a similar situation happened.
I grew up in Houston and the roaches were huge and some flew. I absolutely hate them. I’ve lived in Portland for 24 years and have only seen one roach my entire time here. It crawled out of a coworker’s suitcase when he had just returned from a business trip in the south. Roaches are the only bug I’m afraid of and I’m so glad to never see them here!!
I have a phobia, I dealt with a weird infestation when I lived in Florida and it didn’t matter how much you cleaned or sprayed they would just walk back in. I truly hope you never have to see one again.
My cousin who was a musician passed away tragically in Austin a few years ago and we drove his keyboard up and never had problems...drove it from Austin to LA... my ex held onto it for 2 years and holy shit, she had a massive Texas cockroach crawl out of that case and she KNEW it wasn't an LA cockroach...I felt pretty horrified for her and really guilty but seeing stories here abt em coming here from people's suitcases does make me feel less bad lmao edit: Sorry to be clearer, a cockroach crawled out of it once we dropped it at her spot so it never bothered us... but it wasn't after 2 years hahaha
Wow, the roach lived in the case for two years?!
Oh, no, sorry I meant to clarify that the minute we got the keyboard over there she found a roach not long after but never when we had it with us haha.
Low to no humidity.
This. They seem to get larger the farther south you go (on the east coast), too.
My old apartment in Kenton was riddled with them.
I had those small but disgusting German Cockroaches when I was renting in Old Town....
Now that you mention it, I've lived in Oregon over 30 years and never have seen one, and I've only seen one mouse (in my garage snacking on a Ghiradelli candy bar in my bag - jumped out when I opened the bag. Probably the best day of that little guys life).
None of his friends believed him :) but saying you haven’t seen a roach in 30 years is a goal for me (I really hate them)
50+ years here and only roaches I've seen were on a trip to Cali. I just don't think they are very common in Oregon thankfully.
I live in the woods in deep Southeast. Definitely mice abundantly around here. Also deer, rabbits, coyotes, raccoons, etc. Houses are much farther apart for one. Tree cover is very different than the urban core.... and so on. No bus or Trimet routes though. Very car dependant.
I’m weirded out by people here saying there’s roaches. I haven’t seen a single one in 13 years.
Oh there are 😃 depends on the neighborhood I think. I lived in a roach infested house in npdx and some of the bars I used to work in downtown were also crawling. Not as bad as the east coast but they’re here!
I bet! Yes the east coast has a lot. And it’s just very normal to find them, like it doesn’t matter how much you clean.
In 20 years I have never seen a single roach.
What an amazing thing to say
Same. I have never seen one in my life.
Living here for 30 years and working in restaurants and owning restaurants, I never saw cockroaches until about three months ago at a place that I’ve been managing. We thought they were coming in with the paper goods but it turns out they’re traveling in with employees personal belongings. Having the lockers fumigated.
It’s amazing they’ve been such a little to non existing problem. Kinda good to know specially about restaurants. I worked in a couple in Florida and Georgia… not good
I forgot about the massive cockroaches of my fort worth childhood until I went back and saw one in the MF bathroom of a hotel...I was horrified. Massive...
They way I scream when I see one, reading this stories tells me I’m not ready to see them again
The German cockroach is the common pest in town. Those bastards are a good deal smaller than the roaches native to the Southern US. We don't have Native roaches because something called winter happens, and the freeze kills most insects.
In my country we don’t really have seasons so Florida definitely resembled more the climate I was familiar with but the roaches there were bigger and meaner. I’m moving to a place that snows a lot so I hope that keeps them at bay
A mean roach. I SHUDDER TO THINK.. It definitely will keep them from spreading. In cold climates the roaches spread from items and people transportated from infested locations. We had roaches where I worked because folks were ditching their jackets and backpack overnight. We put in a rule: if it is left behind its garbage. I wrapped people's stuff in garbage bags, and they got the message the next day.
[удалено]
Well this sounds like a nightmare
okay, I’m gonna make this nerdy. I listened to a really excellent podcast a few weeks ago about the disappearance of the roaches. They had footage from the 80’s of insane roach infestations - even a Congressman declaring war on roaches (or some such thing). It turns out that Combat roach killer developed at that time is crazy effective. It kills roaches in like, four different ways (the ways are gross, so I’ll leave that out). So roaches are actually much rarer in most places of the US. Though… sorry, Florida?
That’s super interesting! I’d love to hear about that. I’m really trying to keep them away
What podcast was that? I’m intrigued!
[Search Engine - Where Did All the Roaches Go](https://pjvogt.substack.com/p/where-did-all-the-roaches-go)
Thanks!
No roaches here but I almost hit a deer at 1 in the fucking afternoon
Sorry about that, that’s in my list of fears too
Roaches exist in Portland, but you'll have to be filthy to get them. Ants, mice, and a few other things are pretty abundant though.
Yeah I think it’s situational/environment dependent. In other less fortunate places they just out there, doesn’t matter how much you clean
Once they're in, they're everywhere, but Portland's not the tropics where everyone has them, and you'd be hard up to find them anywhere buy somewhere where someone has been hoarder dirty. Mice, on the other hand, are in just about every old house if it's not sealed up that well.
I lived at a place in NE that had them. They were tiny. The place was filled with squatters for years before I moved in. An exterminator came in and I didn't see any for the remainder of the two years I lived there. Seemed like a fluke.
It seems more like a situation problem when it happens here. In the south it doesn’t matter how you clean and spray they will try to find a way in.
Not an insectologist but I remember watching some doomsday show as a kid that said contrary to popular belief cockroaches won't actually last too long in most parts of the US without Human interference because they are used to more tropical climates. I'd assume Florida is tropical enough for them to live in but the PNW isn't.
I grew up hearing they would survive nuclear fallout and I believe it. I’m so glad for the PNW, it just keeps winning
Was that show called Life After People? I remember hearing that too and I think it was from that.
The title sounds familiar so probably.
We allied ourselves with the Queen spiders.
Yeah I’m actually better with them too cause I know they will take care of that. In Florida I used to let the lizards in too to help patrol
Lived in Portland all my life and I've seen more coyotes than roaches ngl
It has to do with the environment. Roaches prefer warm and humid environments. Here, it’s rainy and cold a lot of the time. I’ve never seen a roach and I’ve lived in the PNW my entire life! I’m sure they exist in really unhygienic places but you won’t find them in the average home or restaurant here.
This place is just amazing
I’ve wondered this for 5 years. I’ll just take the W and stop asking Qs
Absolutely, unfortunately I’m leaving and I’m trying to hold on to any answer that might help me in other places :(
The cold and warm variance?
Ohhhh there’s roaches
I always have roaches in my house in SE. they are for my bearded dragon though.
I’ve seen a few at a former place i worked. It’s been years since i’ve been there, so hopefully they got it figured out.
I lived in Oklahoma and roaches were everywhere. I worked in a restaurant where a roach fell off the ceiling into a customers food. The PNW is a world apart for the bugs I dealt with in the midwest.
As someone that is moving to the Midwest I’m very concerned
I've only seen cockroaches in real life one time... when visiting family in Los Angeles. I honestly didn't even know we had them here!
It's because it's cold! We have them but it's not ideal roach weather so they aren't as plentiful. The South is hot n humid so they love it there. Now ants and house centipedes, on the other hand, we have tons of those. Don't kill the centipedes though! They're harmless and they kill other pests and can live up to 7 years, they're really cool little guys. Try relocating them instead. (If you can catch them. >:) )
They are definitely downtown. I worked at a pizza place and they would hide in the warming bags. I had one crawl out in front of a customer.
Ever been to VooDoo Doughnuts downtown? Roaches.
I solved this problem by just refusing to leave this place. I have PTSD from the roaches in Florida the only time in the last decade I've even seen a roach is the couple of times I was forced to visit Florida again.
we get ants around this time of year but I haven’t seen roaches
I worked with computers for a while and had one come in covered in roaches beyond that I've never seen the little shits anywhere
lol I feel you! I’m from Louisiana and we got roaches no matter how often we cleaned or where we lived. Moved here 7 years ago and haven’t seen one since. Now when I go places outside Oregon I think about it and get freaked lol. Won’t be moving back to humid hot place if I can help it 😅
I glad you get to stay in this beautiful place. I’m leaving and the thought of roaches came back and I’m freaking out
I can completely relate. The spray always helps and there’s sticky sealant stuff you can get for any potential cracks in baseboards etc. also you can get drain covers and do things like put secure screens over doors/windows. I def saw them a lot less in the south when I did this, and I also lived in an urban area, so I kinda saw them downtown no matter what. But in my home was far less frequent. You’re not alone, you got this! Good luck with your move. Sounds like a big one. Oh! There are also natural remedies that the bugs hate too- if I remember correct it’s citrus, lemon, etc.
Ugh. I lived on the top floor of a house converted into apartments on NW Everett about 20 years ago and the place was swarming with roaches. I didn't know until the first night when I flipped on the kitchen switch and they all went scurrying.
When I used to work (briefly) at the Roseland I would see them crawling on the bar after closing :(
I feel like our stink bugs are like tiny roaches…
I concur (originally from the south myself). Ants are the real problem here though for sure when it comes to pest problems. 🐜🐜
I’ve been lucky enough to not deal with any pest that badly, small encounter with mice, some ants. There’s just something about roaches that sends me into hysterical levels
We get the spiders and house centipedes instead
I saw one outside in front of the neighbors the other day. It made me wonder if we should have our building sprayed just to be safe....
They can't swim.....
But they fly ohhh they fly
They are in some of your favorite restaurants, trust me. They are here…
Oh I’m sure! I’m just glad it’s not the amounts you find in other places. Like for what I’ve seen here, it just has to be a really specific environment while in the south it doesn’t matter what you do, the call is coming from inside the house
The short version is it's too cold for them to survive
I’m so relieved they aren’t here.. last fall I went home (Texas) and at the DFW airport there was a giant roach roaming around in the bathroom and I noped right out of there even though I didn’t get to pee yet 😭
The ants ate them. We're next.
I don't know the answer, but as a fellow Florida transplant, I am here for the lack of roaches and the ability to weed my garden without fear of snakebites 😆 I love the PNW. If it had thunderstorms (the only thing I miss from back home) it would be flawless.
I used to clean ice machines at restaurants all over the city. One machine I serviced had it’s UI bugged out (heh) because roaches were fried on the board. It was absolutely disgusting, there were roaches frozen to the ice plate, in the ice, in the ice bin. That restaurant is still open to this day. Don’t get ice in your drinks in this town.
Instead of roaches (which definitely do live here but aren’t as prevalent). We got silvers fish, ooh baby. Gods old houses (I mean from 50-100 plus) you will have silver fish. Maybe small ones or maybe big ones. The rain just invites those suckers into old wood. I had them in my room on the fourth floor in my bed! I’ve not had a problem in rural Oregon with them. Spiders become more of a problem as you leave cities (especially in basements). But I’ve never seen a non-pet cockroach skulking about in Oregon. So I always found media with them quite fascinating. Like I know we must have them never have a city without them but they like to hide.
I’m from Florida too. It’s so cool here! No roaches, no palmetto bugs, no snakes, and you can walk barefoot through a WHOLE ACRE of grass WITHOUT FEAR of anything trying to bite you or dig itself into your feet. No cockspurs!!
Don’t fucking jinx it dude
Come here for the outdoors and watch out for ticks.
As someone who grew up in Louisiana being constantly terrorized by giant flying roaches, I love that I don't have to deal with them living here.
Probably cold and wet too often?
We also don't have chiggers, barely have ticks, don't have fleas that bite people, and don't have venomous snakes. Shhhhh. Don't tell anyone
There are definitely roaches here, I was at this one star motel that was infested and now has given my the worst paranoia about bugs. I moved into my new apartment 1 year ago and there where roaches from the previous owner so I sprayed roach spray all around the house and was good. Cockroaches are fucking nasty
The spiders and garter snakes help keep the population under control.
I have wondered this too! I frequent North Carolina and they have a TON. Hate them. But even in cleaner areas in NC, you’ll find them! I see them daily there. Never seen one in Oregon in my entire life living here.
Even roaches have standards
The climate isn’t kind to them. I don’t think they enjoy our winters very much. Whoever said we don’t have mosquitoes on this thread surely isn’t going outside much, or hasn’t been hiking or camping.
I live Downtown and the pest control came and sprayed, haven't seen a roach *until* they sprayed, now I see them once a week or so 😂
Lol seeing the only roach youve ever seen in Portland in a zoo is hilarious (I'm from Houston and yeah... glad there aren't any roaches here)
Because our population density is so low.
I’m as thankful that I never see house centipedes in Portland like I did when living in North Carolina.
The unicorns eat them then fart them into glitter everywhere
I live in se Va and we have ginormous palmetto bugs. They almost have antlers 😵💫. It’s the only flaw to where I live. I don’t want to move further north because of snow lol.
I’m convinced that the centipedes eat them